Tuesday, July 19, 2011

DROC: A Summary

I'm not sure how to start.

Blogger seemed like a good idea before. It was a way for me to keep track of Victims and Perpetrators, to gather news, to build up the Evidence. A way of checking in on the world beneath and making sure my investigations are grounded in the current, in reality. It's not just a tool anymore, not so much about the investigation but about sharing results. The world's like a wilderness full of people who can't tell that they're lost, and when you find the people who are lost you have to cling to them. Rambling start, but will update more often.

We asked around for more information about the papers we'd gathered from Dande. Nothing was forthcoming. The papers we had nicked were conglomerative, amalgamated, with no names, just statistics. There was a sheaf of financial papers as well, and that was a bit more useful. There was a money trail, there's always a money trail, even if it's covered up by blood and corruption. We found out that several doctors had been paid off in the area, and figured that it was our first clue. We went to visit the local doctor, Doctor Steven Williams, a guy shipped in by an aid org that stayed in the region because he could charge way too much money for his services.

We went to visit one of the doctors at his office. Simone went in for a chat with the man himself, while I went to go rifle through his financial records. After a bit of snooping I found out that 12 kids were checked in at the same time, but there fees were paid for from the same source, the same amount as had been paid in Dande's records. On his desk was an envelope with another cheque for about the same amount of money. I made some notes, put everything back where I found it, and went outside to wait for Simone.

She added some more pieces to the puzzle. Simone had posed as a business women interested in Dande and the money that could be made from them. Williams had been drinking and was in a talkative mood, more than happy to brag about the money to be made from the local aid organizations, particularly the corrupt ones. Dande's offer had been pitched to him as a quick moneymaking scheme. According to Williams, Dande was manufacturing a drug to a plague that didn't actually exist, and they needed people to be diagnosed with the disease to be able to market the drug. So William's was paid to diagnose twelve kids with the manufactured sickness that Dande could take them to the manufactured cure. The kids names were on his records, but we didn't have addresses.

We've asked around, and they're all gone. But there are other kids on the books.

I just have to wonder how they're going to keep people from finding out about this. 12 kids went missing-- even somewhere as distant as here, that's going to cause a fuss.